On April 12, Georgetown University’s Women in Leadership hosted their inaugural Own It Summit. Tickets for the event sold out within 24 hours, hundreds of students and community members attended and a host of impressive speakers participated in panels and workshops. Despite these remarkable achievements, I would not call the Own It Summit a complete success. While this event certainly did empower female leaders, it also left out a significant number of voices in promoting a narrow view of what kind of woman we talk about when we discuss female leadership and success.

It needs to be acknowledged that this event had several barriers to entry that prevented the summit from being accessible to everyone. The $20 entry fee was an economic barrier for many lower-income students and women, and while there were scholarships offered, it is still likely that this fee was a deterrent for some. The entry fee also sent the message, whether intentional or otherwise, that this was an event for women with the means to pay an entrance fee.

The racial makeup of both the event organizers and panelists was also strongly biased towards the perspectives of white women. While women of color did participate, eight of the ten student organizers were white, and 17 out of the 24 panelists were white. It is possible that the event planners made a conscious effort to include a diverse array of voices, but when a space is so dominated by the perspectives of white women, it reinforces the larger structural dynamic that white voices matter more than voices of color.

These dynamics of race and class impacted the perception of the event, as well as those who felt comfortable attending and participating. I spoke with many friends who decided not to attend the summit because they felt their voices and perspectives would not be adequately represented. One friend, who did attend, left after the first hour, saying, “I didn’t feel that a lot of the topics I engage with when I talk about feminism, like class struggles that affect women, labor rights, and race in particular, were being addressed at all.” She went on to say, ”I sensed that the conference would be talking about your more typical ‘Lean In’ and one-percent feminism, which in my opinion is inherently oppressive and exclusive of the large percentage of women who really do need to be talked about when we talk about gender discrimination.” “One-percent feminism” is generally defined as feminism that focuses mainly on the needs of white, socioeconomically privileged women pursuing more traditional kinds of success.

Any event on campus that aims to further women’s leadership and empowerment needs to better represent the voices of all women. While I am a white woman, racism and racial politics in the workplace matter to me because dismantling racism and supporting my fellow women matters to me. An optional session during the summit on “Women of Color” is not sufficient because everyone should hear the voices of women of color, not just the few who choose to listen.

Similarly, focusing on traditional ideas of high-powered success is not sufficient, as it does not include or acknowledge the realities and struggles of working class and poor women. In the fight for gender justice we cannot just be concerned with the struggles of women who occupy space within mainstream, socioeconomically privileged feminism. Fighting for a national living wage and fair conditions in the workplace is as important to me as fighting for my own fair pay, and that should be reflected in all feminist spaces.

Transwomen also need to be engaged in these conversations, as they face unique struggles in the workplace that should be of concern to every person who claims to support the empowerment of women. Any event that supports women’s leadership needs to include the varied perspectives of women of color, poor and working class women, transwomen, and all the other women whose voices were not heard or adequately represented by the Own It Summit. Without these voices, our movement will only support women who are already privileged in many other areas of their lives. To achieve true justice and support all women, we need to engage and listen to voices that the GUWIL Own It Summit did not represent.

I have a lot of friends who have defended Georgetown Confessions. Even as they recognize all the blatant racism, classism, misogyny, etc., they see it as a tool for education and awareness. There are good reasons why they feel this way, and I would love if Georgetown Confessions were a tool for education around social justice issues. But it’s not. It’s a tool of oppression and harassment, and it only further harms those already affected by racism, classism, misogyny, etc. while allowing those who make these comments to feel all the more entitled and powerful.

Comments have disparaged people of color, women, LGBTQ-identifying individuals, people from working class and poor backgrounds, to name only a few of the groups attacked via Confessions. All of these comments have consequences. In our world there are systematic structures of oppression formed around race, class, gender identity, sexuality, ability, immigration status, and more. You need only look to the racial make-up of our prison system, the violence and stigmatization facing black youth and especially young black men, recent cuts to SNAP (the food stamps program), rates of sexual assault on college campuses, rampanttransphobia, and the current immigration system to see the most obvious ways this oppression impacts tens of millions of people. Georgetown, as a community that purports to care about its members and especially as a Jesuit university, should do everything in its power to challenge this oppression. Our community should work to dismantle oppression and challenge the privilege of those (including those at Georgetown) who benefit from the systematic disenfranchisement and oppression of others. At the very least, Georgetown should be a place where every community member, whether they be a student, worker, professor, or administrator, feels safe and welcome, and feels safe living out any and all of their identities.

Confessions is the opposite of this safe space. It allows people to make anonymous attacks that support and perpetuate oppression and pain already felt by so many, and when asked to take down derogatory comments the Confessions team has refused. The comments made about race, gender, class, etc. are deeply problematic and hurtful, and make Georgetown an unsafe space for a countless number of our community members. The message being sent by the people making these comments is that if you have a certain gender identity, or racial identity, or come from a certain economic background, you are not welcome here and you do not belong here. That secretly, and openly, some of your fellow Hoyas do not want you here and will not accept you because they have grown up in a world that tells them not to accept you, and rather than pushing past that ignorance and intolerance they have chosen to reject you and perpetuate centuries of oppression with their words and actions.

I know some people think Confessions has done a good job of exposing underlying racial, gender, and class tensions on campus. I agree, and I do think it is vitally important that we recognize the realities of race, gender, and class in our community. I also know people who bravely challenge these comments and use them as an opportunity for education and awareness. Awareness and education are critical parts of combatting oppression, but we must have a better forum than this. If even one person feels unsafe or hurt by a racist, classist, misogynistic, transphobic, etc. comment that is reason enough in my book for Confessions to be shut down. While hate and ignorance exist at Georgetown, we do not need to foster them and give them a safe space. What we do need is a safe space to discuss our experiences of this campus, our differences, our varied and intersecting identities, and how to better support all of Georgetown’s community members.

Confessions does not even begin to encourage the development of this kind of safe space. Instead, it encourages students to feel entitled to their racism, classism, misogyny, etc. In making these comments anonymously no one has to answer to the consequences of their words or take responsibility for the impact they have on other people, and other people’s perception and experience of our community. The people making these comments likely have a lot of privilege (and have privilege by fact of attending Georgetown alone) and already feel entitled to a whole bunch of things in life. There is a decent chance they have this privilege and yet do not think about why they have it or what that means. Ideally, Georgetown would be a place for people to learn about their privilege, how to challenge it, and how to use it to fight oppression. Instead with Confessions people are being told that it’s okay they have a lot of unfair advantages in life, and not only that, it’s okay for them to harass and degrade those who don’t. It is not just the comments themselves that reinforce oppression; it is the system by which the comments are made that reinforces oppression too.

Georgetown Confessions adds nothing of merit to our campus community. It is an ugly space used to harass and degrade other people. Confessions reinforces a hierarchy that values certain people over others, and fosters a community of hatred and ignorance rather than understanding and love. As a step towards making campus a safer space for everyone, Confessions should be taken down. We should not tolerate this kind of latent hatred, and we have a responsibility to advocate for a better, more tolerant, and more loving campus environment. To quote some of the finest activists for justice in Georgetown’s history, “Our Georgetown is better than this.”

This is an edited transcript of a discussion between Kat, Erin, and Mark on the topic of how gender is used in our language. The conversation began after a Facebook debate about whether or not “you guys” could be used in a gender-neutral context.

Erin: ‪Let’s talk gender, shall we?

Mark: Yes please! I live to talk gender. ‪If I recall correctly, this conversation was sparked by a Facebook status in which Kat addressed her Facebook friends as “guys,” but noted she meant it in a gender-neutral way. ‪I, being a jerk, commented that I was skeptical that “guys” is ever truly gender neutral. Several courteous comment clashes later, here we are. So Kat—what exactly is your position on this topic?

Kat: ‪Honestly, I reached out to Erin and was interested in hearing more from you, because I realize that language both creates and is created by our culture, and I want to learn to use language that creates a better culture. I want to learn to use culture that doesn’t oppress people based on their gender identity, but I am wholly ignorant on the topic. My “position” would be that I’m ignorant. And I want to be able to change the way I speak, but at the same time, not speak in a way that alienates certain people from willingness to engage or listen.

Mark: ‪An admirable goal! There are really two separate issues, I think, when it comes to the “you guys” issue, and they need to be considered independently. One, which isn’t really that fraught, is that our language lacks a second-person plural address—our vosotros, if you will. That leaves various dialects to pick up the slack, hence “y’all” and “you guys.” ‪But “guys” of course was traditionally used to describe men. Which leads to the second issue. How comfortable are we repurposing a word like “guys” in this manner? I’d posit that it’s unique from words like “actor” or “poet,” which were once gender-dichotomized but for which we now use the once-male form for everyone.

Erin: ‪Yes. I think as much as guys is used in “gender-neutral” contexts, it is still a very gendered term and reasserts “male” and “men” as the gender dominant norm.

Mark: ‪I would tend to agree.

Kat: ‪That makes sense. And also it isn’t a title/position the way actor/poet is. It doesn’t tell us anything but the gender of the population. So the repurposing would be more transformative.

Mark: ‪It’s worth asking at this point, though, why transforming a word like “guys” to mean “everybody” reinforces male norms. I have a gut feeling that it does, but I find it a little tricky to articulate.

Erin: ‪It seems related to the idea of referring to people as “cis men” and “cis women” rather than “men” and “women.” Using cis de-centers gender norms and gender assumptions, and I think trying to transform “guys” to gender neutral still has issues with re-centering men and cis men as the gender norm.

Mark: ‪Does our language need a gender norm?

Kat: ‪I don’t believe it does, however I’m not sure how deep we’d have to go to remove a gender norm.

Erin: ‪Our language should be more inclusive of all identities, which involves reexamining language and assumptions and norms reinforced by language.

Kat: ‪I mean, we’d have to refashion the connotations of just ‪about everything. Although there are plenty of intermediary steps before we are achieving that. ‪I mean I think our entire society needs to be de-gendered. We think of everything in terms of gender. And that creates an inherent dichotomy, an inherent inequality between genders and sexes.

Erin: ‪That said, I think there is a balance between de-gendering society and finding other solutions, because ultimately, gender, like race and class and anything else, exists.

Mark: ‪Right. Even if the stereotypes we attribute to it are fabricated.

Erin: ‪Pretending that we can de-gender or de-racialize society also invalidates the fact that these things are all parts of our identities and experiences.

Kat: ‪However, there are lots of aspects of our lives when gender doesn’t need to be relevant. And yet it is present everywhere.

Erin: ‪So that is what I struggle with actually. I think that gender is a huge part of our identities and to pretend it is just a social construct is also really problematic.

Mark: ‪So is it okay to just start with the obvious, and work our way down? ‪Or will effective change need to be more subtle and comprehensive?

Kat: ‪Re: Mark- I think we need to do both. We need to have the “radical” side of it (I use radical in quotes because I don’t think that wanting things like equality should be considered radical) to ‪chip away at the underlying causes. But we also need to make ambitious immediate change, and that requires working our way down.

Mark: ‪Kat, I agree, but I wonder if taking some relatively simple steps—gender-neutral pronouns, non-gendered normative nouns—might not be a more radical move than we realize. It seems to me that a lot of the language that ends up reinforcing gender norms (and more perniciously gender stereotypes) could be very easily screened out with a little awareness.

Kat: ‪Sure seems pretty radical every time I try to speak English hah.

Mark: ‪I’m a strong believer in the ground rule ‪that we shouldn’t specify gender unless it’s apposite to context. The example I use is, “My friends and I went to the bar,” vs. “My male friends don’t like Christine Quinn, probably because they’re sexist.” Unnecessary gendering is actually really common.

Erin: ‪It is in almost every conversation and almost every part of our language.

Mark: ‪Indeed. I think that after all the theory and abstractions we produce on this topic, we still need to have a rule, an ask, for the general population. And I think that ask should be that we only ever mention gender when it’s relevant to context.

Kat: ‪Okay, so how can we, and ideally everyone, make the change? And how do we literally get people to care, and to be able to develop that awareness? I mean this is the most literal sense- like do we need fact sheets on examples of gendered language?

Erin: I think just using the appropriate language ourselves creates a fair amount of awareness, and challenging people in safe contexts when relevant.

Mark: ‪I agree—the first and best thing you can do is change the way you yourself speak. If it’s a cause I believe in, I can also bring up the practice with friends and encourage them to do the same.

Erin: I think in the times when I make conscious efforts to change my language or to introduce myself and my preferred gender pronouns I usually explain myself afterwards since there is a fair amount of confusion. My own practice ends up leading to some level of raised awareness and education.

Mark: ‪I think the conversation should be based around modeling your own de-gendered language. If someone asks you why you don’t say “you guys,” or request a preferred gender pronoun, explain away! It’s not pedantic. And if your friends don’t ask, explain anyway. They’re your friends. They signed up to hear your views.

Erin: Yeah, most people who are my friends know what they’ve gotten into.

Mark: ‪I try to explain from both a personal and a philosophical angle. In practice, it’s not toooo different from teaching people proper grammar. You use language a certain way, you encourage others to as well. This just happens to be infinitely more important than lay vs. lie.

Erin: ‪And I think doing it in a way that isn’t blame-y, because a lot of people are sensitive to being told their language is oppressive.

Mark: ‪It’s not something anybody likes to be told.

Kat: ‪Yeah. I mean even if people are defensive, they are still learning. You are still planting seeds. But there is a lot of resistance.

Erin: ‪And I think we too in examining gender and language need to be very ready and willing to be corrected and to reexamine our assumptions.

Kat: ‪Admitting you fuck up, that it isn’t easy, that you are working on it. Not like “get on my level, oppressor.”

Erin: Exactly. ‪I think it’s the response of acknowledging the mistake, apologizing, reflecting on it and making an effort to be more conscious in the future. And that we all fuck up both by nature of being human and by nature of the world we live in.

Mark: ‪Agreed entirely. Okay, so have we reached a consensus?

Erin: ‪I consent.

Mark: ‪I consent, and hereby swear to reach out to my friends in an effort to further remove gender-reinforcing norms from my language. Kat?

Disney princess have a history of representing thin, sexualized, and often white beauty (the first princess who was not white was Jasmine, introduced in 1992). The princesses both reflect and perpetuate standards of beauty in Western society, and have done so for decades. With expansions into more and more products, from dresses to dolls to lunchboxes and backpacks and plastic dishware, their influence only continues to grow and inform culture.

Growing up, Belle from Beauty and the Beast was my favorite Disney princess. I had two reasons for this: 1. She was the princess that looked the most like me, as we are both white and both have dark brown hair and dark brown eyes. 2. She loved books, and I too, loved books. As a child I desperately wished for her pretty yellow ball gown and her incredible library.

Disney’s princesses, through their films and aggressive merchandising campaigns following those films, become icons for many young children. The images of these princesses that Disney promotes impact and inform children’s understanding of themselves, their appearances, and their goals. Child psychologist Jennifer L. Hardstein theorizes that these films create a “princess syndrome”whereby young girls are taught that if they are pretty enough they will find happiness, love, and fulfillment.

Whether or not you agree with Hardstein, many of these films present harmful images that promote narrow ideals of beauty and happiness. Most of the images presented through these princesses are of women who are incredibly thin with large breasts, and for most princesses the storyline ends with marriage or other romantic fulfillment. While some princess have goals that extend beyond romance, Brave is the first of these films that does not show a happy ending replete with handsome prince and happily-ever-after. Merida similarly rejects girly dresses and other typical trappings of Disney princesses, and is depicted in a plainer, un-sexualized fashion.

This difference is, of course, intentional. Chapman writes of her character, “Merida was created to break that mould … To give young girls a better, stronger role model, a more attainable role model, something of substance, not just a pretty face that waits around for romance.”

Merida is meant to exemplify bravery, athleticism, and other less-typical princess traits that create a substantive role model for children. In redesigning her, Disney has undone this work, and reinforces the idea that what ultimately matters is to be pretty, not smart or funny or kind or brave.

If we want to teach children that what matters in life is who they are as people, how they treat others, and other values of care and community, we need to support products that exemplify these values. It is excellent that Disney seems to be abandoning its redesign process, and I hope that as they move forward with what is sure to be a full line of Merida-themed merchandise they use the original images of Merida from the film, and promote all the excellent qualities Merida exemplifies so well.

This article was originally published on Policy Mic as part of their feminist skillshare.

Comparing Kim Kardashian to a couch, as most of the internet did following her appearance several weeks ago at the Met Ball in a floral dress, is not OK. Judging women’s bodies, pregnant or otherwise, is never justified and perpetuates dangerous standards of beauty and physical perfection. While Kim Kardashian has made the choice to place herself in the public eye, the consequences of the media constantly fat-shaming her reverberate throughout our culture, and reinforce the message that being fat is just about the worst thing you can be.

Since Kardashian first announced her pregnancy, tabloid and celebrity blog coverage of her weight gain has been incessant and astoundingly cruel. Many magazines made claims that she now weighs 200 pounds and that Kanye West finds her body so repulsive he is considering leaving her. People have defended these attacks by arguing that she made the choice to live in the public eye, and now she is facing the consequences of that choice. Never mind that she is pregnant, and is growing another human life inside her body, one that is relying on her as a source of nutrition, food, and growth. This is seen as no excuse for her to gain weight and change the shape of her famous body; a body the public feels it has ownership of.

When media sources criticize Kardashian’s weight gain they send the message to all women that it is not OK to be fat or out of shape, even during pregnancy. This anti-fat messaging, perpetuated throughout our culture, reinforces the cultural value of thinness and normalizes fat-shaming.

Our cultural value of thinness is unhealthy and causes immense harm to women, and undermines concerns of health for concerns of beauty. Fat shaming and weight bias impact overweight and obese people by increasing their risk of depression and anxiety as well as encouraging low-self esteem and body image. Negative attitudes around weight also contribute to the prevalence of unhealthy eating behaviors and discourage overweight children and adults from engaging in physical activity.

While it may seem that Kim Kardashian is just a silly celebrity who should buck up and get over the weight gain backlash, this commentary has real impact on our culture and our images of overweight people. By consistently presenting fat as a negative quality and shaming the bodies of people we feel take up too much space, we create biases and double standards that cause real harm in our society. Anti-fat bias undermines access to healthcare, and inhibits the promotion of healthy relationships with food and nutrition. Rather than promoting health and well-being, fat-shaming and anti-fat bias perpetuate patterns of harm and contribute to, rather than alleviate, our country’s weight problems.

Over 400 people died when a factory collapsed in Bangladesh last week, with over 1,000 injured and several hundred more still missing. This is the most deadly event in the history of the garment industry. We are responsible for these deaths, and we are accountable to the workers and their families in Bangladesh, and every other place in the world where goods we consume are produced. Our demand for cheap, fast fashion has created a demand for even cheaper labor, a demand that is responsible for abominably low wages, unsafe workplace conditions, and death in Bangladesh and many other countries around the world. We have a duty to change our behavior and call upon companies to take responsibility for their workers and their conditions, wherever in the world those workers may be located.

Bangladesh is the world’s biggest source of cheap, low-wage labor, and is the second-largest exporter of apparel. Workers there are paid just 18 cents an hour and often work very long hours. Workplaces violate many safety and health standards, and workers routinely face unsafe conditions, as they did in the now collapsed Rana Plaza factory. Workers who attempt to organize or form a union face aggressive, harsh intimidation. Just last year Aminul Islam, a union organizer in Bangladesh, was brutally murdered just weeks after winning an incredible international victory for workers. The conditions in Bangladeshi factories are unconscionable, and it is ever-growing demand for cheap products made with cheap labor that allows this system to continue, unchecked.

Being a feminist can be really hard. Being a part of any progressive social movement, any group campaigning for social justice, is exhausting and frustrating. As important and powerful as this work is, sometimes I forget how to take a step back and just breath. I have been reflecting for a while on the idea of self-care and how to balance this with a greater concern for activism and action. Recent events, both those involving my brilliant, beautiful friend Kat Kelley, and the experience of Adria Richards at a recent tech conference, have pushed me to begin figuring out this negotiation between concern for myself and concern for the movement at large.

Kat, one of the most passionate activists I know for women, sexual health, and sex positivity (and co-founder and co-coordinator of this blog), was attacked via social media for the incredible work she does to advance these causes. Adria Richards called out two men for making sexist jokes at a tech conference, was fired, and then received a barrage of criticism, including rape and death threats, in response.

Whenever you are doing work that challenges oppression there are going to be people who hate what you are saying and doing and will challenge you on it. Not everyone is going to be thoughtful with their engagement. Some people will use slurs and ugly words and make threats and personal attacks. This can be disheartening and frustrating, sometimes it can be scary and, when one comment piles up on top of too many others, devastating.

As a writer on this blog, and a self-described radical feminist moving about in an occasionally hostile world, I certainly encounter my fair share of criticism and personal attacks, and am equally effected by attacks against my friends and feminist activists. I don’t always know how to respond to this. I am torn between a desire for retreat, not as an admission of defeat but as a break from all the hate and negativity, and a need to feel safe and supported again. The other half of me feels that I have a duty to stand up to all of this, to challenge every comment, poster, and article that is misogynistic (intentionally or not) and perpetuates the patriarchy. I don’t always know what to do or how to balance these two different instincts.

What I have taken away from the feminist community is that it is ok, and good, to take breaks. It is important that we take care of ourselves and take a timeout from engaging with all the negativity when we need to. Whether it is a particularly vicious commenter or a week spent reading and writing about sexual assault in Steubenville, it is ok to acknowledge that these things have an impact on us, that we are human and can be hurt and sometimes we need to focus on taking care of ourselves as a result. If this means taking a day or a week or a month, it is important that we do that, and not be so caught up in fighting misogyny or racism or classism or whatever else that we forget to give ourselves the time we need to heal, to reflect, to recover.

It is also important that we develop the resources we need to handle the emotional side of feminist and social justice work. This means developing strong communities of support- family, friends, fellow bloggers, and anyone else- who can offer love, support, hugs, and a little André when we need them.

However, it is also important to acknowledge that this sort of backlash is a reality of any work that seeks to challenge and change norms. As a mentor to the fantastic Chloe Angyal, of Feministing.com, said, “If you say things of consequence there will be consequences, but the alternative is to be inconsequential.” There can be empowerment found in the words that are meant to tear us down. It means that what we are doing is having an impact, that we are being heard. Even a person who responds with hatred or vitriol is engaging with us, and even if it seems like they are not taking anything productive away from the interaction, they have at least been exposed to ideas they might not otherwise be aware of. Ultimately what it means when we are attacked or harassed in our work is that we are challenging oppression, we are experiencing success in this challenge, and maybe, just maybe, leaving the world a better place.

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